Drought Threatens To Cripple Southeast Nuclear Industry

[Ace Pace]

Dailytech

Drought may shut down plants, lead to much higher energy bills in the Southeast


Whether climate change is a good or bad thing is open to debate, but change indeed appears to be happening in the Southeast U.S., which is being hit with record droughts. These droughts turned neighbors Florida and Georgia against each other in Federal courts over water rights for the water flowing into the Everglades. It also is having some startling consequences on one major U.S. alternative energy source.

Nuclear power is only recently gaining newfound respect in the U.S. and abroad, with the first application for a new nuclear plant in 30 years filed late last year and Canada pushing ahead to restart one of its major research reactors after criticism on government inactivity. Despite these modest gains nuclear remains much maligned among the U.S. public and still has yet to win broad support. Residents in the Southeast may soon be learning, though, that they didn't know what they had till it was gone, as the drought threatens to cripple the southeast nuclear industry and send energy costs in some areas skyrocketing.

Water is a key part of the process of generating nuclear energy. It is used to cool the reactor core and to create the steam which is used to drive turbines to convert the heat energy from the reactions into mechanical and finally electrical power.

Plants tend to fall into two categories. The first have tall cooling towers that discharge most of the water as steam, which is lost into the atmosphere. Others lack the tall cooling towers and exhaust hot water into reservoirs; however they are limited by environmental regulations as to how much hot water they can purge. These restrictions are due to the fact that the water is so hot it can easily kill fish and local plants. Exhausting heated water does recycle a small portion of the used water back into reservoirs, but much of the water still evaporates as it exits steaming hot.

Spokeswoman Julie Hahn for Progress Energy Inc., which operates four reactors in the drought zone, explains the massive water needs of the energy producing giants. She says one Progress reactor, the Harris reactor, intakes 33 million gallons a day, with 17 million gallons lost to evaporation within its megatonic cooling towers. Duke Energy Corp.'s McGuire nuclear plant consumes more than 1 billion gallons a day, though a lesser percentage is lost to evaporation than with the Harris reactor.

The situation has gotten extreme, and numerous plants have been shut down, are preparing to temporarily shut down, or are throttling back production. Nearly a fourth of the nuclear reactors in the U.S., 24 out of 104, are in drought afflicted regions. Nearly all, 22 of these 24, rely on lakes and rivers for their water needs. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. government body which regulates the nuclear power industry, has set minimum allowable water levels for these water sources. Most of the water sources are approaching these minimum levels. Falling below means a government mandated plant closure.

Even if the government relaxes its restrictions, the water levels are forecasted to drop below the level of the intake pipes for many of these plants. At other plants, the water is becoming too hot under the sun and from stored up heat to be used for cooling purposes.

Robert Yanity, a spokesman for South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. states grimly, "If water levels get to a certain point, we'll have to power it down or go off line."

There is no easy answer. The intake pipes are large and often up to a mile long and concrete and extending them would require months of effort and an overhaul of the plants pumping systems and an unpleasant price tag of millions of dollars. And the pipes could only dip so deep before they started sucking up sediment and organic materials, leading to blockages.

The shortage affects about 3 million customers in parts of the Southeast who get their power solely from nuclear energy. Even more people will likely be affected as the quasi-governmental Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) relies on 30 percent nuclear power to fuel the energy needs of its 8.7 million customers.

The plants need over a foot in rainfall over the next month to stay in business, but there is no relief forecasted in site. Donna Lisenby, executive director of the Catawba Riverkeeper environmental group that tracks conditions Lake Norman and other lakes along the 225-mile Catawba River system, bemoans, "If we don't get at least 10 to 15 inches of rainfall in January, February and March, lake levels could be lower in the fall of 2008 than they were in 2007 -- and that could be a disaster."

The Progress Energy Harris plant is currently at 218.5 feet, 3.5 feet above the legal limit. Progress officials say if the water dips below the limit, they will be forced to close and buy power from other sources. Duke's McGuire nuclear plant's lake dropped 4.5 feet since last year and only needs to drop one more foot to be below the legal limit, mandating closure.

The TVA reactor at Browns Ferry in Alabama already shut down once in August 16, 2007 due to the discharged coolant being too hot. As reservoir temperatures rise, this is expected to become a much more regular occurrence.

An additional call for concern was raised by David Lochbaum, nuclear project safety director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who argues that most of the plants can't take the wear and tear of repeated shut-downs and start-ups.

So aside from forcing many Americans to adopt less clean source of energy, what exactly will these possible shutdown potentially cost them? Daniele Seitz, an energy analyst with New York-based Dahlman Rose & Co states, "Currently, nuclear power costs between $5 to $7 to produce a megawatt hour. It would cost 10 times that amount that if you had to buy replacement power -- especially during the summer."

Nuclear power, while unappreciated, provides cheap alternative energy power. With climate change threatening to shut down many of the reactors in the Southeast, many people may start to realize how great nuclear power really was when faced with the harsh reality of when it’s gone.

So now... not only these plants will have to shut down, but the already over extended north america power network will be stretched even further at a critical point.

[Surlethe]

At some point, we're going to have to start pumping water in from desalinization plants on the oceanside to meet freshwater needs; when that happens, we may as well devote all of the remaining inland freshwater sources to the existing nuclear power stations.

I expect that most future nuclear plants will be built on the coast of large bodies of water, or even floating to negate the threat of increasing sea levels.

[Illuminatus Primus]

What right does GA have to SOUTH FLORIDA's water? Fuck them. Maybe Mr. Pray At The State House should've used Google and looked up Australian water conservation measures and not approved shit like a new water park in the last couple years. Fuck Georgia. Too bad Sherman didn't burn more of it to the fucking ground.

[Kuja]

What do you expect? The damn state was founded by a bunch of people who couldn't pay their bills in the first place!

[Ted C]

I wonder how hard it would be to set up some kind of geothermal cooling system: run the water through a long underground pipe network to let it bleed heat before putting it back in the reservoir.

[Sea Skimmer]

I wonder how hard it would be to set up some kind of geothermal cooling system: run the water through a long underground pipe network to let it bleed heat before putting it back in the reservoir.

That’s not going to be practical, rock is an insulator and you’d need an absurd piping network to dissipate so much heat without heating the rock to the point of fracture. The cost to build and operate would be completely prohibitive.

One possible solution I can see would be to have a series of larger cooling ponds, the first couple of which are covered to reduce evaporation losses, and have cooler water pumped back into them to avoid dangerously levels of heat buildup. However that means buying lots more land which is simply not an option for many nuclear power stations. It’s also still going to drive up operating costs and still lose a fair bit of water from the uncovered ponds (the more ponds to cover the more total space you’d need)

[NoXion]

Why not kill two birds with one stone and use the waste heat to desalinate water? I'm not an engineer so forgive me but if there's some way of dealing with the leftover salt and other residue, which presumably can also be used in some fashion, why not do it?

[NoXion]

Ghetto edit: and if the nuclear plant is too far from the sea for desalination to be practical, use the waste heat to distill sewege or something like that.

[Sea Skimmer]

You can’t distill sewage into drinking water; bacteria will evaporate along with the water. You have to use reverse osmosis which involves pressurizing the water and forcing it through a series of high end filters. Most modern desalination plants also use reverse osmosis. Desalination plants that work off distillation usually don’t produce water you really want to drink, though it’s fine for washing ect. Anyway, a nuclear plant near the sea could just use sea water for cooling, solving the problem of water use out of hand, we sure aren’t going to run out of salt water.

Some nuclear plants in Russia do use nuclear reactors waste heat to provide heating to local towns and cities, and a number of conventional power plants in Europe and some parts of the US do the same. This doesn’t help save water, but it does increase efficiency and helps offset the enormous operating costs of nuclear reactors.

[NoXion]

Some nuclear plants in Russia do use nuclear reactors waste heat to provide heating to local towns and cities, and a number of conventional power plants in Europe and some parts of the US do the same. This doesn’t help save water, but it does increase efficiency and helps offset the enormous operating costs of nuclear reactors.

Would it save water if seawater was used for cooling and subsequent heating, or does salt water fuck with heating systems in some way? If so, would there be any practical way to engineer around that?

I realise that far more qualified minds than mine have probably thought of these questions and found answers, but unfortunately qualified minds aren't holding the purse strings.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Some nuclear plants in Russia do use nuclear reactors waste heat to provide heating to local towns and cities, and a number of conventional power plants in Europe and some parts of the US do the same. This doesn’t help save water, but it does increase efficiency and helps offset the enormous operating costs of nuclear reactors.

Would it save water if seawater was used for cooling and subsequent heating, or does salt water fuck with heating systems in some way? If so, would there be any practical way to engineer around that?

I realise that far more qualified minds than mine have probably thought of these questions and found answers, but unfortunately qualified minds aren't holding the purse strings.

The one-line answer is that salt water is highly corrosive on the account of all the salts dissolved into it.

[Sea Skimmer]

Would it save water if seawater was used for cooling and subsequent heating, or does salt water fuck with heating systems in some way? If so, would there be any practical way to engineer around that?

Seawater can be used in the cooling systems of the power plant, but you can’t use it to transmit heat to other locations, it’s too corrosive even when converted into steam, which is how those remote heating systems work. However steam heating systems are normally closed loops, so you aren’t losing any vast amount of freshwater water to start with.

[Ted C]

Anyway, a nuclear plant near the sea could just use sea water for cooling, solving the problem of water use out of hand, we sure aren’t going to run out of salt water.

I don't see how that solves the problem. The problem at hand is a local spike in temperature that kills aquatic life; the same would presumably occur around whatever point you dumped super-heated seawater back into the ocean. The real issue is to find some way to cool the water before putting it back in the environment.

Some nuclear plants in Russia do use nuclear reactors waste heat to provide heating to local towns and cities, and a number of conventional power plants in Europe and some parts of the US do the same. This doesn’t help save water, but it does increase efficiency and helps offset the enormous operating costs of nuclear reactors.

Within a certain distance of the power plant, that could be useful in winter, but it doesn't address the problem in summer, when electricity demand is high for air conditioning, and you certainly don't want to be adding heat to houses.

[Erik von Nein]

Anyway, a nuclear plant near the sea could just use sea water for cooling, solving the problem of water use out of hand, we sure aren’t going to run out of salt water.

I don't see how that solves the problem. The problem at hand is a local spike in temperature that kills aquatic life; the same would presumably occur around whatever point you dumped super-heated seawater back into the ocean. The real issue is to find some way to cool the water before putting it back in the environment.

That's really not that big of a deal. I live near one of the plants in California and, aside from the immediate area (the small bay it's in, which has now become a subtropical biome complete with coral growth) there's no appreciable difference in the temperature. All things considered the near-by gas-powered plant is actually worse for the local environment then the waste heat from the nuclear plant, only because it's intake pipe sits in a bay where lots of fish spawn, thus killing off large amounts of said spawn.

[Sea Skimmer]

I don't see how that solves the problem.

Then you don’t understand the problem to start with.

The problem at hand is a local spike in temperature that kills aquatic life; the same would presumably occur around whatever point you dumped super-heated seawater back into the ocean. The real issue is to find some way to cool the water before putting it back in the environment.

You didn’t read the article in any detail did you?. We ALREADY have ways of cooling the water! These methods involve massive levels of evaporation, meaning the plants consume massive amounts of water. This ONLY matters when that water is freshwater being sucked out of a river which also supplies freshwater for other uses, and which is suffering from a reduced flow because of a drought. If you pull cooling water out of the ocean then you can evaporate as much of it as you ever want and it won’t matter one bit.

Within a certain distance of the power plant, that could be useful in winter, but it doesn't address the problem in summer, when electricity demand is high for air conditioning, and you certainly don't want to be adding heat to houses.

Did you not read the sentence when I stated this would not save water? I just included that tidbit because it’s interesting, nothing more.

[Singular Intellect]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if nuclear plants are producing such an enormous amount of excess heat, do we not have the technology to put that excess energy towards work rather than just trying to get rid of it?

[Singular Intellect]

Edit: For example, geothermal energy plants are using exactly what nuclear plants are producing in excess, heated liquid.

Am I missing something? It's obviously never going to be a 100% efficient system, but heating all that water and not even trying to extract it's energy seems like an awful waste to me...

[Sea Skimmer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if nuclear plants are producing such an enormous amount of excess heat, do we not have the technology to put that excess energy towards work rather than just trying to get rid of it?

Well, sometimes that makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t. For nuclear plants, it really doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money to do that.

The thermal of a typical nuclear power plant is about 33%, which is not that great, but it doesn’t matter that much. You see, that waste heat is coming from uranium, which is only a small part of the cost of a nuclear power plant, compared to building and operating the thing. Any system which seeks to turn the waste heat into mechanical energy (which can turn generators) is going to be expensive to install in an already hugely expensive facility, and yet it would save little money on fuel.

What’s more, the only real way to turn that heat into mechanical movement is a steam turbine, but the nuclear plant is already running colossal steam turbines. These turbines have several stages with progressively larger turbines that can use progressively lower temperature steam. Three or four stages is pretty typical. Adding more stages would either require absurd sized turbines or some kind of complicated system to reheat the steam.

The story is different with conventional power plants, here fuel costs are a much greater part of the total investment, and the plant its self is fairly cheap to build. That make an investment in higher thermal a much more economical decision. Many recently constructed power stations are combined cycle gas turbine units, in which waste heat from the gas turbine is recycled to run a steam turbine. This increases the thermal efficiency of a gas turbine power plant from about 40% to as much as 59%.

Now mind you, if you only want to use waste heat as heat to heat buildings in the winter, then that kind of system is much cheaper; given a dense urban area in close proximity it can be very highly efficient. In fact a few gas turbine power plants exist which use waste heat to run steam turbines, and then in turn use the steam turbines waste heat to heat buildings.

[Ted C]

You didn’t read the article in any detail did you?. We ALREADY have ways of cooling the water! These methods involve massive levels of evaporation, meaning the plants consume massive amounts of water. This ONLY matters when that water is freshwater being sucked out of a river which also supplies freshwater for other uses, and which is suffering from a reduced flow because of a drought. If you pull cooling water out of the ocean then you can evaporate as much of it as you ever want and it won’t matter one bit.

OK, that makes sense now.

Is corrosion from the seawater still a problem, though?

Also, is the hot water condensed from steam or running in a separate system? I'm wondering if running the hot water back into the reactor to be boiled again would be an efficiency benefit (assuming it's not already being done as much as possible), since it seems that water that's already hot could be vaporized faster than water that has to be brought up to the boiling point first.

[Beowulf]

Also, is the hot water condensed from steam or running in a separate system? I'm wondering if running the hot water back into the reactor to be boiled again would be an efficiency benefit (assuming it's not already being done as much as possible), since it seems that water that's already hot could be vaporized faster than water that has to be brought up to the boiling point first.

They're way ahead of you. The coolant loop for the reactor is in almost all cases closed, both because of efficiency, and more importantly, the water ends up radioactive.

[Zixinus]

An additional call for concern was raised by David Lochbaum, nuclear project safety director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who argues that most of the plants can't take the wear and tear of repeated shut-downs and start-ups.

How true is this?

[Pu-239]

Is corrosion from the seawater still a problem, though?

Probably not, seeing as nuclear ships probably use seawater for cooling already.

[Mayabird]

*takes a deep breath*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

SUCK IT, GEORGIA! SUCK IT LONG AND HARD!

Enjoy the taste of your own stupidity, rednecks! I didn't vote for Sonny, but all you idiots did, and where is your god now when you pray for rain? But you had better things to do with your lives than worry about water management, like oppressing gay people. So instead you flouted the water restrictions because it was your right to keep your H-2s sparkly clean in the summer heat, and now it comes back to bite you in the ass.

The only way this could be better is if my mom didn't have to put up with this, and you idiots actually recognized that this was your own fault. It's too bad that you never do realize how your own stupidity fucks yourselves in everything (this goes way beyond water - I mean, the entire state is a testament to the results of stupidity).

Dryness makes places more flammable!

Also, I am very, very glad I got the hell out of there.